The "lost" number of copies in use compared to licenses sold are computers running unlicensed(pirated) copies of windows, if a computer with a license isn't setup properly it could also go into this group and be counted twice. Like if someone reformats a computer and uses the license from another machine for whatever reason when re-installing windows.

Do you have evidence that suggests that machines in this state existed in such numbers as to materially affect the 400M number? Likewise downgrades?

You mean aside from every enterprise license deal that never deployed Vista?

The funny thing is the same could be said about XP. XP was not deployed in mass until almost four years after release, and by that point it was no the same OS as the SP2 update replaced the kernel with the Server 2k3 kernel and drastically re-architected the security model. This permitted rapid deployment since Server 2k3 was already undergoing validation and started from a higher baseline. Until that point the news was all about how corporations were skipping XP and sticking with Win2k.

Vista was a victim of only existing for three years, vs XP existing for six. Win7 had rapid adoption because organizations were already in the validation process for Vista, and Win7 did not change anything underlying that required re-validation either from the app or security layers. This made the transition smooth, much as the transition to XP SP2 was due to validation already occuring on Server 2k3.

No argument from me over most/any of that. But pretending the license count for Vista is anything other than complete hogwash is a joke. Microsoft sold a significant number of licenses to maintain support contracts and provide down-grade licensing for XP as part and parcel of those licenses. A financial success, but a deployment disaster. Pretending otherwise is foolish and stupid. The fact it's difficult to find decent useful statistics that are in any way current doesn't change the fact that Vista is hardly used by enterprise. I've never seen it installed on more than 1 in 100 machines in enterprise. I've seen more Windows 7 machines deployed than I have ever seen Vista, and it's still pretty early for Windows 7.

The "lost" number of copies in use compared to licenses sold are computers running unlicensed(pirated) copies of windows, if a computer with a license isn't setup properly it could also go into this group and be counted twice. Like if someone reformats a computer and uses the license from another machine for whatever reason when re-installing windows.

Do you have evidence that suggests that machines in this state existed in such numbers as to materially affect the 400M number? Likewise downgrades?

You mean aside from every enterprise license deal that never deployed Vista?

The funny thing is the same could be said about XP. XP was not deployed in mass until almost four years after release, and by that point it was no the same OS as the SP2 update replaced the kernel with the Server 2k3 kernel and drastically re-architected the security model. This permitted rapid deployment since Server 2k3 was already undergoing validation and started from a higher baseline. Until that point the news was all about how corporations were skipping XP and sticking with Win2k.

Vista was a victim of only existing for three years, vs XP existing for six. Win7 had rapid adoption because organizations were already in the validation process for Vista, and Win7 did not change anything underlying that required re-validation either from the app or security layers. This made the transition smooth, much as the transition to XP SP2 was due to validation already occuring on Server 2k3.

No argument from me over most/any of that. But pretending the license count for Vista is anything other than complete hogwash is a joke. Microsoft sold a significant number of licenses to maintain support contracts and provide down-grade licensing for XP as part and parcel of those licenses. A financial success, but a deployment disaster. Pretending otherwise is foolish and stupid. The fact it's difficult to find decent useful statistics that are in any way current doesn't change the fact that Vista is hardly used by enterprise. I've never seen it installed on more than 1 in 100 machines in enterprise. I've seen more Windows 7 machines deployed than I have ever seen Vista, and it's still pretty early for Windows 7.

1) Corporate sales are only half of sales. That means that in the consumer sector, where downgrade rights do not exist, Vista sold at least 200 million copies.

2) Every condition you are making exists for every release of Windows. There is no way to confirm how much deployment XP or Win7 got either. The challenge is to demonstrate that Vista was treated significantly worse than other Windows releases, something I am dubious about considering the different circumstances. Given that most corps take 2-3 years to test, validate, wait for service packs, etc, and given that Vista was released at the same time as a economic recession which suppresed hardware purchasing, and given that its API's were functionally identical to Win7, and that Win7 was released just as the economy stabilized and began recovery, I find it very difficult to consider it an apples to apples comparison.

Quite frankly Win7 was released at the exact same stage in Vista's cycle that XP SP2 was released in XP's cycle. The minimal changes made migration to the newer OS an obvious move but said nothing about Vista.

Consumers could get downgrade rights when Vista flopped and even at the beginning with Windows 7 I remember seeing downgrade rights to XP as an option, just like downgrade rights will likely be available when Windows 8 comes out to discourage returns.

Which is why the whole license counts is a load of BS and is only useful for MS marketing and fanboys, it is too easy to distort and can be vague to really serve as any kind of meaningful metric on the success or failure of a Windows OS.

Vista is not a victim of only existing for 3 years which is the typical lifespan of a major consumer Windows release which for the past 20 years have been: Windows 3.1 - 1992Windows 95 - 1995Windows 98 - 1998Windows XP - 2001Windows Vista - 2006Windows 7 - 2009Windows 8 - 2012

Going back the past 20 years and assuming Windows 8 releases on schedule, Windows Vista was the exception.

Vista really was terrible and only peaked at around 18% market share when Windows 7 was released which for a Windows OS is awful, no amount of revisionist history will change Vista.

As far as the missing 300 millions Windows 7 licenses go I don't think the idea of MS losing that many licenses to piracy is outrageous, given how piracy is rampant in some parts of the world. While it may only make up a small percentage, the misconfigured and other reasons why a machine may be "unlicensed" and therefore is why MS isn't saying that it is the number of pirated copies. Also MS hasn't released any information about this number and how they have arrived at it so I don't trust it to be accurate in any way.

There are no "missing 300 million licenses", I pulled a number out of my ass about computers running Windows and it had nothing to do with piracy. it had to do with Darkpill's dumb claim that the iOS install base has surpassed the Windows install base.

I agree, but if I were to make a stab at the contrary argument, I could argue that Windows 7 could have been Vista Service Pack 1, but the name was so toxic, they decided to change it immediately.

Whatever was known internally in the run up is not entirely dispositive of the question, by the way. Marketeers can work their magic at nearly any time or at least right up until the big runs go to the printers. In products I've worked with, I've seen name changes happen right up until pretty near the end, so if Vista had sold very well, for instance, Windows 7 might really have gone out as Vista Second Edition or Vista 2009 or even Vista Service Pack 1.

No, it couldn't - MS has rules about what can and cannot go into a Service Pack. Generally speaking, with limited exceptions, there are few new features in SPs. This is not the case from Vista -> 7 - the new UI alone would certainly disqualify it.

Yeah, cause people have to realize Vista was necessary. Most problems were third party driver problems. Yes, it completely sucked when it came out. Now? You can use Vista no problem. Without Vista, all the hate would have been piled onto 7. There would have been no time for third-parties to get their ass in gear.

ZeroZanzibar wrote:

If you say so. Vista Second Edition it is, then.

Again, BS. By that logic, XP was 2000 Second Edition for Home users and Apple charges for Service Packs.

No, it really didn't. Some aspects of it did -- I used it from launch, and had only two problems: 1) poor file copy / move speed, which I thankfully seldom did, and 2) no fucking Creative Audigy drivers for months and months after release. But we've known Creative can't write drivers to save its life for years, so it wasn't that huge a surprise, given that Windows' sound stack had been rewritten.

Entegy wrote:

By that logic, XP was 2000 Second Edition for Home users and Apple charges for Service Packs.

Plenty of people have made those statements about both XP and Apple. The difference, though, is that in the case of Windows 2000 > XP, a large number of geeks (and people who thought they were geeks, but were in fact merely gamers) at the time felt that XP was a step *backwards* from Windows 2000 (at least, to my memory). That is quite the opposite of the perception of Windows 7 compared to Vista. If Windows 7 is Vista SE, it's much more like 98SE to 98. I don't really have a problem with calling 7 Vista SE, assuming that those who do so are willing to admit that most of what made Vista problematic *was not actually changed in 7*. It was much more the world around the OS that changed, and not the OS itself (which is, I believe, the point that ZeroZanzibar is making?).

It was much more the world around the OS that changed, and not the OS itself

See the problem with that is it ignore the OS *did* change. From the UI to kernel changes (did you know WinRT started in windows 7 or that windows 7 radically changed the dispatcher lock that's existed unchanged in every single version of NT up to that point?)

Calling it second edition pretty much means you have to ignore everything that's ever happened in the entire history of Microsoft to come up with some completely unsubstantiated nonsense about vista second edition. That's the point people are making about ZZ's post

It was much more the world around the OS that changed, and not the OS itself

See the problem with that is it ignore the OS *did* change. From the UI to kernel changes (did you know WinRT started in windows 7 or that windows 7 radically changed the dispatcher lock that's existed unchanged in every single version of NT up to that point?)

Calling it second edition pretty much means you have to ignore everything that's ever happened in the entire history of Microsoft to come up with some completely unsubstantiated nonsense about vista second edition. That's the point people are making about ZZ's post

You think 98SE didn't have any changes from 98? I never claimed that 7 didn't change from Vista (or never intended to, though I suppose someone might interpret my post that way; I think my posting history here *well* supports that I believe 7 was far more than "Vista SP1"); merely that it was a change roughly in line with several of Microsoft's smaller releases: 98 > 98SE, 2000 > XP. I don't have a problem with calling it "Vista SE" -- *with the caveat* that people acknowledge it was not "Vista fixed" or "Vista done right." It was Vista evolved, and "backtracked" on only one piece of the core Vista experience I'm aware of (UAC). Vista SP1 and the environment catching up to the new infrastructure was "Vista fixed" or "Vista done right."

I may still feel Vista SE isn't the best description, but it's not a point worth arguing in my mind. You may have a different opinion, and you're welcome to it.

Some people have a really warped perception of what "service pack" means, thanks to XP. It's supposed to be a roll-up of all the previous bug fixes, not a new WiFi stack and a new firewall and hardware DEP support and a new web browser and on and on...

It would be more correct IMO to say Windows XP SP2 was a major version Microsoft handed out for free than that XP or Vista or 7 were "service packs" for the previous OS.

No, it really didn't. Some aspects of it did -- I used it from launch, and had only two problems: 1) poor file copy / move speed, which I thankfully seldom did, and 2) no fucking Creative Audigy drivers for months and months after release. But we've known Creative can't write drivers to save its life for years, so it wasn't that huge a surprise, given that Windows' sound stack had been rewritten.

Interestingly enough when I worked on Win7 I had a discussion with one of the core Vista team members about file copy performance. One thing he pointed out was that on Vista file copy performance was actually better than XP, but the difference is that XP lies to the user. XP had no concept of device caches at all, when it was released hard drives typically had 128-256kb of cache built in, network adapters typically had 0-32kb and so on. As a result, it was not really directly aware of those caches and relied on the devices to be able to handle them. By the time Vista came out, drive caches ranged from 8-16MB and other devices also had large(comparatively) caches, resulting in a situation where a file copy in XP would say it was complete, but the cache had not been flushed. Vista 'solved' this by being made aware of those caches and as a result it would not claim file copies were complete until all caches were flushed. The benefit to this is that if power is removed for any reason(common in the Embedded space) you do not corrupt the file system or lose data, the drawback is that because Vista was 'honest' about file copy start and completion times, it appeared to be slower.

With Win7 they attempted to compromise the messaging, it appears faster than Vista, but it isn't really, they worked quite a bit with how and when dialog boxes relating to file copy operations appear and what they show to change user perception of what actual performance is, without putting a user's data at risk.

As for the Audigy, ugh. Microsoft, Intel and virtually everyone else in audio and chipsets started the Universal Audio Architecture initiative back before even Windows XP launched, literally every single player in audio participated except Creative, and then when it came out they acted stunned and blindsided, and then started a campaign via enthusiast websites to claim it was somehow bad and a step backwards. Creative Labs was bar none the worst company I ever interacted with professionally, and negative stories for me go back to the Windows 2000 era when they would not contribute a inbox driver to the OS and Microsoft had to commission a third party to develop one for them since thier cards were so popular(and that one ended up being the most stable, although it was software driven). I especially hated it when Creative avoided PCIe by making false claims that it introduced higher latencies and thus could not deliver quality sound. Standard PCI was a shared bus with far more noise, crosstalk and *real world* latency than PCIe could ever have, Creative just did not want to bother doing any actual engineering work, as usual. No love lost with Creative.

Very very little. The majority of it was free upgrades anyone could install on windows 98. UI was identical except for the start menu bitmap.

That's my point. The only "second edition" of a consumer version of windows was very very minor.

Quote:

I never claimed that 7 didn't change from Vista (or never intended to, though I suppose someone might interpret my post that way; I think my posting history here *well* supports that I believe 7 was far more than "Vista SP1"); merely that it was a change roughly in line with several of Microsoft's smaller releases: 98 > 98SE, 2000 > XP.

It's nothing like 98 --> 98se. That alone is far different from 2000 -> xp.

Quote:

I don't have a problem with calling it "Vista SE" -- *with the caveat* that people acknowledge it was not "Vista fixed" or "Vista done right." It was Vista evolved, and "backtracked" on only one piece of the core Vista experience I'm aware of (UAC). Vista SP1 and the environment catching up to the new infrastructure was "Vista fixed" or "Vista done right."

But again, Microsoft never uses "second edition" in consumer oses. They did it exactly once, and it was a really minor change. Since then there's been really minor changes in windows (the media center editions) and each got it's own separate name

This is why I said what i did. It takes far too much hand waving away facts to ever claim it's second edition, even with your very different definition f second edition.

FYI there is one annoying thing microsoft scaled back on with windows 7. You no longer have that virtaul folders based on metadata in any folder, just the library folders. That irks me, since I used to use that feature often

The biggest problem is going to be how a complete breakdown of the ecosystem will occur in the chasm between x86 windows and WARM, which will seriously damage the long term viability of Windows efforts on portable formfactors.

A second serious, but not fatal problem is the complete disjoint and incoherent interface design between the desktop and metro apps. This just isn't going to be treated as a single ecosystem by end users and IT management.

Some people have a really warped perception of what "service pack" means, thanks to XP. It's supposed to be a roll-up of all the previous bug fixes, not a new WiFi stack and a new firewall and hardware DEP support and a new web browser and on and on...

It would be more correct IMO to say Windows XP SP2 was a major version Microsoft handed out for free than that XP or Vista or 7 were "service packs" for the previous OS.

AT one point there was talk of a 2nd major XP version based on sp2. I guess Microsoft decided not to gouge people on what amounted to free updates you could get anyways

Some people have a really warped perception of what "service pack" means, thanks to XP. It's supposed to be a roll-up of all the previous bug fixes, not a new WiFi stack and a new firewall and hardware DEP support and a new web browser and on and on...

It would be more correct IMO to say Windows XP SP2 was a major version Microsoft handed out for free than that XP or Vista or 7 were "service packs" for the previous OS.

AT one point there was talk of a 2nd major XP version based on sp2. I guess Microsoft decided not to gouge people on what amounted to free updates you could get anyways

1) Internally there was no such talk.2) SP2 upgrades were *not* freely available to SP1 users. SP2 completely replaced the kernel for XP with the one from Server 2k3(seperate development track) and effectively EOL'd the NT client core. Architecturally there are fundamental differences between the two, and it remains one of the most significant OS overhauls Microsoft has ever done in the consumer space. The only comp I can think of is XPSP2->Vista, unless you wish to include the jump from Win9x to NT/XP of course.

Some people have a really warped perception of what "service pack" means, thanks to XP. It's supposed to be a roll-up of all the previous bug fixes, not a new WiFi stack and a new firewall and hardware DEP support and a new web browser and on and on...

It would be more correct IMO to say Windows XP SP2 was a major version Microsoft handed out for free than that XP or Vista or 7 were "service packs" for the previous OS.

AT one point there was talk of a 2nd major XP version based on sp2. I guess Microsoft decided not to gouge people on what amounted to free updates you could get anyways

1) Internally there was no such talk.2) SP2 upgrades were *not* freely available to SP1 users. SP2 completely replaced the kernel for XP with the one from Server 2k3(seperate development track) and effectively EOL'd the NT client core. Architecturally there are fundamental differences between the two, and it remains one of the most significant OS overhauls Microsoft has ever done in the consumer space. The only comp I can think of is XPSP2->Vista, unless you wish to include the jump from Win9x to NT/XP of course.

I only lived through the whole period, so naturally I must have forgotten a great deal.

As I recall it, in the period following the year 2000 people became anxious about viruses, so Bill Gates had the whole team work on making XP less likely to be compromised. Hence we got SP2. After that had happened, the OS architects went back to Vista, which had been ignored during that period.

That's why there was a long gap between XP and Vista, and maybe why a few features in Vista needed some work. However, the main complaint with Vista was the lack of drivers, and certain companies have had Ballmer threaten to throw a chair in their offices.

Some people have a really warped perception of what "service pack" means, thanks to XP. It's supposed to be a roll-up of all the previous bug fixes, not a new WiFi stack and a new firewall and hardware DEP support and a new web browser and on and on...

It would be more correct IMO to say Windows XP SP2 was a major version Microsoft handed out for free than that XP or Vista or 7 were "service packs" for the previous OS.

AT one point there was talk of a 2nd major XP version based on sp2. I guess Microsoft decided not to gouge people on what amounted to free updates you could get anyways

1) Internally there was no such talk.2) SP2 upgrades were *not* freely available to SP1 users. SP2 completely replaced the kernel for XP with the one from Server 2k3(seperate development track) and effectively EOL'd the NT client core. Architecturally there are fundamental differences between the two, and it remains one of the most significant OS overhauls Microsoft has ever done in the consumer space. The only comp I can think of is XPSP2->Vista, unless you wish to include the jump from Win9x to NT/XP of course.

I only lived through the whole period, so naturally I must have forgotten a great deal.

As I recall it, in the period following the year 2000 people became anxious about viruses, so Bill Gates had the whole team work on making XP less likely to be compromised. Hence we got SP2. After that had happened, the OS architects went back to Vista, which had been ignored during that period.

That's why there was a long gap between XP and Vista, and maybe why a few features in Vista needed some work. However, the main complaint with Vista was the lack of drivers, and certain companies have had Ballmer threaten to throw a chair in their offices.

You are mostly correct, although the timeline is a bit off. XP was released August of 2001, and within 90 days was so compromised by security holes that the company was spending nearly as much time trying to secure it as they were working on Vista. By 2003 it became clear that XP was going to drag the company down on its own, devs were constantly being diverted from Vista(which had its own development hell going on, to be clear) to XP fixes, resulting in stagnation. The decision was made in late 2003 to halt Vista development, and spend the next 10-12 months fixing XP. The easiest path to doing so was to leverage the work already done on Server 2k3, which had an excellent security track record(for the time).

After the release of SP2, Vista was restarted, with all teams having to re-submit their code but now via a series of 'quality gates' that were based on lessons learned from XP. This process was new, not very automated and as a result *sloooow*. But it resulted in what was, from a technical point of view, a very high quality release compared to XP. Obviously it was a marketing disaster for a number of reasons, but the groundwork laid, both technical and in the process, is what made Win7 so easy comparatively, and able to hit all of its internal milestones and external ship dates. That process has carried through for Win8 it seems, although I'm on the outside now.

XP resulted in major growing pains for the company, it was an extremely hard lesson learned and it cost the company almost half a decade of stagnation while they found ways to scale development processes beyond those anyone had encountered to that time. It was very painful, but worth it in the end.

SP2 completely replaced the kernel for XP with the one from Server 2k3(seperate development track) and effectively EOL'd the NT client core. Architecturally there are fundamental differences between the two, and it remains one of the most significant OS overhauls Microsoft has ever done in the consumer space. The only comp I can think of is XPSP2->Vista, unless you wish to include the jump from Win9x to NT/XP of course.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition used the server 2003 kernel. That was quite a differnt animal then the regular 32 bit version of xp, which I think Microsoft made kernel changes but didn't replace it

Granted I was not at the corporate level, I'm just an engineer, but at that level we never heard anything of the sort. Its possible some program manager somewhere thought of this idea, but I doubt it was ever seriously considered.

Quote:

Quote:

2) SP2 upgrades were *not* freely available to SP1 users.

That kind of a silly statement isn't it? Of course they where free

This is a response to the idea that Service Packs are just rollups of previously available updates. This is true most of the time. SP2 was different, it replaced almost the entire core of the OS. That is *not* typical for a SP. It also added a number of new features, also not typical of a SP.

Quote:

Quote:

SP2 completely replaced the kernel for XP with the one from Server 2k3(seperate development track) and effectively EOL'd the NT client core. Architecturally there are fundamental differences between the two, and it remains one of the most significant OS overhauls Microsoft has ever done in the consumer space. The only comp I can think of is XPSP2->Vista, unless you wish to include the jump from Win9x to NT/XP of course.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition used the server 2003 kernel. That was quite a differnt animal then the regular 32 bit version of xp, which I think Microsoft made kernel changes but didn't replace it

It was replaced with the kernel from Server 2k3, and the XP kernel was retired. XP64 went even further, it was Server 2k3 top to bottom with the XP UI defaults and process prioritizations changed to the consumer settings(something you can do manually in Server), and a few of the 2k3 apps removed/disabled. Both it, and XPSP2, however, are based on the Server 2k3 kernel.

I believe the Marmite reaction to Windows 8 is a good thing for MS. Far too many people using Windows are apathetic and are not passionate about it the way Apple users are about Apple products. Windows 8 is a great opportunity for MS to build a loyal userbase who go out there and spread the hype and defend against criticisms the same way Apple users regularly do. We can already see how there is a core group of users who are really really passionate about Windows 8.

Very very little. The majority of it was free upgrades anyone could install on windows 98. UI was identical except for the start menu bitmap.

That's my point. The only "second edition" of a consumer version of windows was very very minor.

Interesting...I hadn't realized all that was made available to 98. But then, I think I came from 95 to 98SE. What I *do* remember is the love lavished upon 98SE. It was actually similar to the love lavished upon XP when Vista was released.

My entire point was that I really don't think it matters if people call 7 Vista SE. The last "SE" OS Microsoft created had an excellent reputation (at least in the -- admittedly primarily gaming -- circles I inhabited at the time). 7 has an excellent reputation. The only problem I have with "SE" is the suggestion that it somehow "fixed" what was wrong with Vista, when it didn't.

Very very little. The majority of it was free upgrades anyone could install on windows 98. UI was identical except for the start menu bitmap.

That's my point. The only "second edition" of a consumer version of windows was very very minor.

Interesting...I hadn't realized all that was made available to 98. But then, I think I came from 95 to 98SE. What I *do* remember is the love lavished upon 98SE. It was actually similar to the love lavished upon XP when Vista was released.

My entire point was that I really don't think it matters if people call 7 Vista SE. The last "SE" OS Microsoft created had an excellent reputation (at least in the -- admittedly primarily gaming -- circles I inhabited at the time). 7 has an excellent reputation. The only problem I have with "SE" is the suggestion that it somehow "fixed" what was wrong with Vista, when it didn't.

There are two features that differentiate Win98 from Win98SE. The first is minor, and thats Internet Connection Sharing, which permitted one PC on the home network to connect to the internet via whatever method was available(typically dialup) and then share that connection with other computers on the network.

The second was actually pretty major, and that was ACPI. ACPI was a completely new architecture for handling hardware and power management. Win98SE was the first implementation of it at the OS level, although until Windows 2000 and XP, few consumers would actually use it, preffering the older APM for compatability reasons.

It was replaced with the kernel from Server 2k3, and the XP kernel was retired. XP64 went even further, it was Server 2k3 top to bottom with the XP UI defaults and process prioritizations changed to the consumer settings(something you can do manually in Server), and a few of the 2k3 apps removed/disabled. Both it, and XPSP2, however, are based on the Server 2k3 kernel.

See I never heard this. It also doesn't seem to make sense as the xp sp2 kernel did things the server 2003 kernel did not (DEP protection for instance)

It was replaced with the kernel from Server 2k3, and the XP kernel was retired. XP64 went even further, it was Server 2k3 top to bottom with the XP UI defaults and process prioritizations changed to the consumer settings(something you can do manually in Server), and a few of the 2k3 apps removed/disabled. Both it, and XPSP2, however, are based on the Server 2k3 kernel.

See I never heard this. It also doesn't seem to make sense as the xp sp2 kernel did things the server 2003 kernel did not (DEP protection for instance)

That is because it came later, MS moved internally from maintaining two seperate kernel branches(server/client) to a single line, with server and client OS versions deriving from it. The client kernel was deprecated, and the server kernel became the only kernel. The same kernel was released for server as SP1, which was released right around the same time(and included DEP as well).

A second serious, but not fatal problem is the complete disjoint and incoherent interface design between the desktop and metro apps. This just isn't going to be treated as a single ecosystem by end users and IT management.

History suggests the opposite is true. DOS and Win16 apps looked radically different, yet coexisted for a decade (an era MS is widely credited as "winning", in fact). Same thing happened in the early days of Win95, though the transition of everyday tasks to pure Win32 look & feel went quicker for most people.

You have to remember that there are millions & millions of people who think "computers are hard" and stop there. Not because a UI requires too many clicks, or has a disjoint desktop metaphor, or offers too many / too few design cues, or whatever...they simply *do not have* a mental model of Windows. A redesign of the shell simply ain't gonna change that, for better or worse, even one as radical (and intentionally incomplete) as Program Manager 3.1, or Metro, or GNOME... In short, a critical mass of folks are going to keep calling their monitor "my Facebook" no matter how the UI chrome around it behaves.

95 -> 95OSR2 had some fairly big changes under the hood, as I recall. Not to mention all the OS & shell plumbing that was simultaneously evolving due to IE4 / Active Desktop.

Add it all up and I'd say you had more technical diversity under the "Win95" brand than "WinXP" had over its long span. Maybe comparable to {Vista + 7} too, depending what your criteria are.

As someone who worked on Win9x, I strongly disagree. The technical changes for Win95 were minor, the most significant were the addition of USB support in OSR2. They never swapped the kernel or significantly revised or introduced API's, as happened between XPSP1->XPSP2.

In my opinion, there was not as much change between the initial Win95 and the final WinME as there was between XPSP1 and XPSP2. We pretty much rebuilt the OS, dropping the original NT client kernel entirely, rather than simply refining the existing codebase and adding features.

Edit: To be clear, I did not work on Win95 or 98. I worked on WinME, and yes you can flame me for that but as with most things there is a story to it. My first MS OS was Windows "Neptune", a consumer focused variant of Windows 2000 that never shipped, but who's innovations showed up in WinXP(which I worked on extensively both pre and post launch, my final work on it was as recent as last year) on up through Windows 7(much of the fastboot technology you see today was prototyped in Neptune back in 1999/2000). But while I did not work at MS during the Win95 timeframe, I understood enough about the OS to know what was a major or minor change. The most significant change that happened during the Win9x era was by far the introduction of ACPI with Win98SE, which was a major rearchitecting of how the OS talked to hardware and utilized resources.

Respectfully, I think you have a niche view of what counts as a major change. USB support requires some pretty deep hooks. Not as much work as ACPI, perhaps, but it had a far bigger impact on consumers and the PC market. As far as tech, it was still way more than simply adding a new type of peripheral -- what we'd call a "class driver" under terminology / standards that didn't exist at the time, but started to take shape as a result -- like when Win 3.x added support for video capture hardware.

That's just one example. What about the brand new filesystem introduced in OSR2? You don't think FAT32 (whose use continues today!) was an important innovation?

Don't you remember how much the shell evolved over Win95's lifecycle? For a couple years around '97ish, single click navigation with faux-hyperlink underlining became the *default* UX setting. The default desktop went from a 256-color bitmap to a heavily scripted web abortion...which nobody liked, granted, but that doesn't make it "minor."

Does DirectX not count as a major new API? ActiveX? Neither shipped in Win95 proper, yet they became crucial pillars of the Windows developer ecosystem during the OSR2/IE4 era.

I'm not even counting all the various applets that were added (NetMeeting) or removed (Internet Mail & News) by various out-of-band service packs. We take that sort of thing for granted nowadays, but it was a big step back in the days when "shrink-wrap release" was a literal term and 28.8k was considered fast. Furthermore, since the antitrust lawyers had not yet intervened, all of the above happened under the Windows banner -- separating out segments like "Windows Live" and "SDK / DDK / Open Specification" is a more recent phenomenon. As MS, its contemporaries, and eventually the Justice Dept saw it, *Win95 itself* was changing...fast. (too fast, said the plaintiffs)

Of course, the real test for Microsoft will be sales of W8/WinRT tablets and overall Metro momentum, and the latter will be determined in good part by how W8 users use W8.

I would not be surprised to see WinRT flop, honestly. Now that Intel has matched ARM performance per watt(exceeded it slightly) I can't see any strong argument in favor of an ARM based tablet. Had MS been corporate focused with WinRT, making it extremely manageable and business friendly I could see it taking off there due to its security advantages, but since they eliminated domain support and other management features I just don't see the market for it now...

I would not be surprised to see WinRT flop, honestly. Now that Intel has matched ARM performance per watt(exceeded it slightly) I can't see any strong argument in favor of an ARM based tablet. Had MS been corporate focused with WinRT, making it extremely manageable and business friendly I could see it taking off there due to its security advantages, but since they eliminated domain support and other management features I just don't see the market for it now...

You can still manage a WinRT device, in part, using domain features. Joining a domain may not be possible, but using Exchange ActiveSync, there's still management option, including accessing a separate marketplace for apps from a WinRT device. In a world where BYOD is growing, especially for tablets, I'm honestly not convinced that full management is actually a necessity anymore. I don't have a WinRT system to test on. If you do, what management features have you found are missing?

I would not be surprised to see WinRT flop, honestly. Now that Intel has matched ARM performance per watt(exceeded it slightly)

Wait...when did this happen?

Go read Anandtech's Medfield review. At this point it'll be a feature and process race, but the two architectures are neck and neck. And given that, as much as a long time AMD supporter like myself would love to see a true Intel alternative, I simply do not think anyone has a chance once the only difference is process. Intel is way out ahead of everyone else in process development.